Search - Dracula vs. Frankenstein on DVD

Hey, King Diamond's newest album.

Holly Apollyon | The Overlook Hotel | 09/20/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I can remember even as a small child watching it and cringing, recognizing a bad movie before I knew what a bad movie was.

Two initial point of observation:

(A) The dork playing Dracula was the worst Dracula EVER. The Count from Sesame Street makes a more credible vampire, or maybe T.J. Hooker, Matt Houston, Mary Tyler Moore, or even the shark from Jaws. This Dracula eerily resembles King Diamond. I kept waiting for him to tear off with a verse from Abigail or Them. This version of Dracula is portrayed somewhat like a talking mime, complete with three inches of white grease paint, lipstick, and large raccoon-like black patches around the eyes. Additionally, Dracula is the only character in the movie with a built-in echo.

(B) Wow! Frankenstein's Monster resembles Frankenstein's Baked Potato. His face is a bloated, rotten, clenched mess in which features are only minimally identifiable. The Monster is atypically distinguished by the extra-small jacket, heavy shoulder pads, and block-mounted elevator shoes. The Monster's method of attack: Snarling and bellowing, the monster shoves and slaps his victims to death. There is no escape. You will die screaming, your eyeballs pummeled from their sockets.

The plot of this movie, such as it is, involves King Diamond, I mean Dracula, seeking out the modern day descendant of the original Frankenstein. Dracula is interested in having the modern day Frankenstein ply his mad scientist wares on Dracula's behalf. And apparently, for no other reason than to serve the movie title, Dracula wants to exhume the immortal remains of the Monster; fortunately, and conveniently, the Monsters just happens to be buried a stretch down the road in the local graveyard. But the wheelchair-ridden Frankenstein decides he doesn't want to take orders from Count Diamond, I mean Dracula---so Dracula grimly unveils his gigantic plastic-looking silver monster-ring and shoots a poorly-animated lightning bolt at the wall.

Yeah, that's what I thought, Frankenstein, now straighten up.

Mixed into the supernatural intrigue is the blonde woman searching for her missing hippy sister; unbeknownst to her, the sister has in fact been abducted by Frankenstein as test stock for Frankenstein's evil experimentations! The blonde woman is subsequently captured by Dracula and conveyed to Dracula's new lair, the local church (the chosen sanctuary for all vampires). Dracula intends to exsanguinate the blonde woman, but is rebuked when the Monster shows an interest in the captive. Dracula retaliates, brandishing his disproportionately large plastic fangs.

The fight is on, baby! The Thrilla in Salmonella. Tickets by the Boardwalk, just look for the little guy with the hat. Dracula, at approximately 6 minutes until sunrise, backs out of the church and fifty yards into the adjoining woods. He stands there trying to give his best onstage magician performance scary face while the gargling and growling Monster pushes and slaps at him. Dracula counters the attack by taking the Monster apart like a cheaply-stuffed doll. The Monster refuses to back down, persisting even when both arms have been dismembered and the Monster is no longer capable of his patented shoving/slapping attack. Dracula is ultimately forced to behead the Monster.

Suddenly, the sun is rising. Oh sweet Countess Bathory! Dracula breaks into a staggering half-hearted run, moving back towards the church entrance. Just as he makes to the steps, near to the structure's threshold, Dracula succumbs to the sun's destroying influence, going from runny make-up King Diamond, to ashy-face King Diamond, and finally to skull-face King Diamond. Man, he almost made it, and alas, had he done so, there might have been intriguing sequels such as Dracula vs. Milo, Dracula vs. The Legend of Boggy Creek, or even Dracula vs. Xanadu.
"

A fond farewell to the classics, in color!

Robert I. Hedges | 06/29/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I know this movie gets bashed alot for various reasons, however, I like this movie! Here is the closest thing ever made in color, in more recent times(1972) to the classic Universal Horror Monsters. Admittedly Zandor Vorkhov is not much of a Dracula, but hey, you got Lon Chaney Jr. and J. Carrol Nash(who appeared together in House of Frankenstein!) Angelo Rossettio(who starred along side Bela Lugosi in many a film) and music by a guy who did same for many Republic Serials! Even Forry Ackerman gets into the act! The machines used in the Frankenstein lab were also the original Strickfadden machines used in the classic Frankenstein films. Buy this video!"

Talk About a Piece of Stinky Gouda.

Robert I. Hedges | 01/17/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This is one Grade A, cheesy stinkfest of a film, as anyone should reasonable expect from Al Adamson, King of Gouda, as it were. I find myself curiously unable to summarize the 'plot', which very well could stem from a veritable lack of coherent story, but that's half the fun of these Grade Z classics, anyway. I do want to spend a moment here to about the qualities that make this a true prize for fans of the truly horrible monster movie genre, of which I count myself at the forefront.
Adamson didn't have much money when he made this film (obviously) so his strategy was simple: get one star and the remainder of the cast could be relatives, friends, street people, etc. In this case, poor Lon Chaney gets the nod to play the extremely cliche mute (and dumb) lab assistant to J. Carrol Naish, a wheelchair bound, garden variety mad scientist, who severs people's heads off and tried to bring them back to life. He is befriended by the worst Dracula EVER (Zandor Vorkhov), who I think looks like Frank Zappa on uppers. Dracula just happens to have a business proposition for Naish involving bringing Frankenstein's Monster back from the dead because he just happens to have part of the original monster lying around his house. Of course they do this with wires and electricity, and what emerges is a monster truly worthy of this Dracula, in other words, laughable. He appears to be the Sta-Puft Marshmallow Man with extremely bad acne, whose only real power is walking like Jimmy Cagney. Into the mix come a few meddling kids, one of whom is on a search for her little sister (actually a prisoner of Naish) and a guy she brings along, who has the ugliest pants I have ever seen in my entire life. After showing us a gratuitous Nazi motorcycle gang rape scene thwarted by Lon's ax, and a wretched 'walk on the beach' scene with an unbelievably bad piece of music, none of which has any particular relevance to the rest of the film, we get back to the central story (as it were) by having the good guys (big sister and ugly pants guy) go to the freak show where Naish works. Eventually they confront Naish, who reveals the sister, and says a bunch of stuff about her making the exactly right kind of plasma (I'm actually a bit fuzzy on the science angle of all this, sorry.) A midget carnival barker enters the fray and drops Lon Chaney's puppy into the basement, which irritates Lon, so he falls onto an ax face first in one of the lamest 'special effects' I have ever seen. This is quickly followed by Naish getting a gun, but wheeling inadvertently into his own guillotine, where, of course, he gets his head chopped off. The movie then has people running around all over the place (kind of reminiscent of the laboratory scene in "The Wild, Wild World of Batwoman") and eventually Dracula ties the big sister to an oil refinery; ugly pants guy frees her by scaring off Frankenstein's monster with a sparkler; Dracula melts the ugly pants guy with a very bad special effect beam from his ring of evil; blonde girl, the monster and Dracula all run around in the woods a while, end up at an entirely new location where the monster and Dracula fight over the girl (at least that's what I believe was happening), the girl shrieks a lot, and Dracula runs through the woods some more to a church (?), where he collapses and is burned up by the sun. OK, any questions? Yes, it is THAT kind of movie. I am sure that there are some subtle nuances that I didn't capture in the above summary, but you get the general idea. The movie was rated "GP", which was the direst precursor to "PG" (really), and doesn't really have what I would consider realistic gore, more like gruesome tastelessness. There is a very small bit of nudity (breast) on a 'patient' in the crazy doctor's lab, but that's really the only thing objectionable. Well, except for the plot, direction, production values, casting, and continuity, anyway. If you like cheesy bad movies, it is hard to top Adamson, and this is one of his best (worst). I gave it four stars simply because of length. It is fairly long for this type of film (I didn't time it, but trust me, it is long, or at least feels that way) and drags in a few places, notably in the running around in the woods scenes. Also contributing to the loss of one star was the dreadful music video style beach walk montage sequence, which showed mostly waves and seagulls for about three years, I mean minutes, while excremental music was being played in the background. If you like bad, and I mean really bad, movies, this is not to be missed."

Trash-o-rama Horror, '70s Style!

Mark Savary | Seattle, WA | 05/23/2001

(4 out of 5 stars)

"This movie defies description, but I'll try.I recall watching this
schlockfest on "The Creature-Double-Feature" program, Saturday
mornings on Channel 56, Boston. The DVD adds all the bits deemed too
scary for the kiddies, and more besides (although rated PG, there is a
hint of bare breast in about two scenes).The movie is really three
bad horror movies put together in a big blender. There's the
Frankenstien part, the mad doctor part, and the Dracula part, which
smash together into a big ball of mush.The last surviving member of
the Frankenstiens works with a crazed Lon Chaney to butcher helpless
teens, then bring them back to life so he can extract some kind of
fear-induced serum murdered people produce.Meanwhile, Drac is in
town, and snatches the body of the Frankenstien monster. He plans to
use Doc's serum on the monster, which will make Drac king of the
vampires, or something like that. Drac teams up with Doc Frankenstien,
and they use the monster to kill their enemies. Doc has captured
the Judith's sister, and is using her to make his serum. When she
disappears, Judith tries to track her down. She gets slipped some LSD
in a biker bar, and then does a trippy hippie dance and meets up with
some stylin' hippies. They help her to look for her sister, while she
falls in lust with the head guru-hippie-guy. He becomes
action-hippie-guru-guy when it becomes time to battle Drac and Frank
(think Mannix crossed with Mike Brady after he got his hair
permed). One of the most unique things about this movie, besides
monster vs. monster, is that Drac can fire heat rays from his
ring!Dracula is played by the filmmakers' stock broker! Though no
Lugosi or Lee, he is strangely effective as a gotee-bearded
Drac! Forrest J. Ackerman (the writer who coined the shorthand term
"sci-fi"), cameos, and J. Carrol Naish plays Doc Frankenstien. Jim
Davis (Jock Ewing on "Dallas"), plays a cynical cop, and Russ Tamblyn
(Dr. Jacobi on "Twin Peaks"), plays Rico, the chief biker bad
guy.Angelo Rossitto, who plays the carnival dwarf, will be familiar
to film fans. He appeared in the 1932 classic "Freaks" (1932), and
"Mr. Wong in Chinatown" (1939). Horror fans will remember Rossitto in
"The Corpse Vanishes" (1942), and "Scared to Death" (1947), both with
Bela Lugosi. He was also a regular on "H.R. Pufnstuf". His most famous
recent role was Master in "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" (1985)
Sadly, in later years he was forced to run a newspaper stand in
Hollywood because he could not make enough money in films to live
on. The DVD is great, packed with extras, and nice interactive
menus. There's also an alternate ending where Drac drives a silver
hearse! It sounds (and is!), laughable, but on the other hand, what
kind of car would be a better Dracmobile? Though hardly a classic,
the movie will gratify those monster fans who always wanted to Drac
and Frank fight it out.


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